Ian Kelsey

KELSEY, Ian Bruce
Kelsey, Ian Bruce of Vancouver and West Vancouver. Passed on March 6, 2012. Predeceased by his father, John Howard Kelsey (1951), mother, Christina Aitken (Buchanan) (1997), two sisters, Barbara Ruth (1978) and Diana (1981) and his wife, Doreen Ida (Jones) (2011). Survived by his three children, Howard, Douglas (wife Janet), and Cheryl-Anne, and his four grandchildren, Mitchell Scott (wife Jill), Jenna Marie, Kathlyn Diane Kelsey of Langley and Kelsey Christopher Atlay of West Vancouver. Ian Bruce was born in Nanaimo, British Columbia and spent his early years in the forests of Vancouver Island. He attended his first school at Fanny Bay, in a Japanese logging camp run by the Kagetsu family, and there learned to read and speak Japanese at the age of five. In the late 1930s his family moved to West Vancouver where he and his two sisters attended Pauline Johnson Elementary School and West Vancouver High School. After graduation he planned to spend the rest of his days in the logging businesses established by his father, where he had worked during school vacations from the age of twelve. The untimely death of his father in a logging related accident and dissolution of his teenage marriage changed those plans dramatically. He reluctantly returned to school, received a teaching certificate after attending the Provincial Normal School in Vancouver (1955) and eventually earned a bachelor's and a master's degree for teaching purposes from the University of British Columbia (1958, 1959). Four years later he earned a Ph.D. in educational psychology from the University of Washington in Seattle. During his years in education he served as a high school teacher in Vancouver (Lord Byng and Killarney), assistant professor of education at the University of British Columbia, faculty member of Vancouver Community College, faculty associate and administrator at Simon Fraser University, vice- principal of a senior high school (Prince Rupert), principal of a high school and elementary school (Tahsis), Chairman of the first College Council of Vancouver Community College, and board member and Chairman of the Vancouver School Board in two different eras (1969 -1972 and 1988 -1993) Out of his years of travail in education he set forth in writing what he believed public education should be and could be for children worldwide. He eventually named his essentials The Beauty of Public Education. In retrospect he felt he had been ushered out of forestry into education to discover the challenges facing teachers, administrators, policy makers and others and to set forth what education should and could be universally. Ian Bruce was forever a reformer, and freed many from oppression and suppression. He furthered equal rights and privileges, equality of the sexes, equality of opportunity, rotation in office, religious liberty, and separation of the church and state. He was the founder of Canadians United for the Separation of Church and State. He felt it was a lifelong commitment to ideas in the Bible and the writings of Mary Baker Eddy, Discoverer of Christian Science, that impelled his quest for more God-like ways and means. His church members asked him to serve on the Christian Science Committee on Publication for British Columbia for several years. He did so from 1993-1998 and then returned to completing his writings on education. All his writings can be viewed free of charge on his website titled The Beauty of Public Education. Ian Bruce had a great love of God, his home, his wife, their three children, and their four grandchildren. A gathering of remembrance will be held at the West Vancouver Yacht Club - 5854 Marine Drive, West Vancouver, on Saturday, March 31, 2012 from 4 - 6 PM. All are welcome. Please come and introduce yourself to the family.